Demme masterfully exhibits both the harsh realities of the time with the unexplainable mystical world that settles in and around them like a fog, even if he has trouble making the two elements mesh.
Beloved (1998)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:66
Fresh:51
Rotten:15
Average Rating:7/10
Consensus: A powerful, emotional and successful film adaptation of the original novel.
Runtime: 2 hrs 52 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis:
With the startling, engrossing world of Beloved, director Jonathan Demme returns to the big screen following his Academy Award-winning work on The Silence of the Lambs and the emotional power of...
With the startling, engrossing world of Beloved, director Jonathan Demme returns to the big screen following his Academy Award-winning work on The Silence of the Lambs and the emotional power of Philadelphia to craft a story of singular emotional impact. Academy Award nominee Oprah Winfrey stars with Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Kimberly Elise and Beah Richards in this compelling story adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. Beloved translates to the screen with its visceral daring intact, thoroughly immersing viewers in the haunting, haunted landscape of this story.
Oprah Winfrey, for whom Beloved is the ultimate labor of love, appears in her first starring feature film role since earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in The Color Purple, with a performance of undeniable fearlessness. Winfrey optioned the rights to Beloved upon its publication and nurtured the project for nearly a decade, personally shepherding it to its current incarnation as one of the most anticipated motion picture events of the year.
Winfrey stars as Sethe, a woman of elemental grace and unspoken mystery. A figure of fierce determination, Sethe is a runaway slave struggling to carve out her own simple existence with her children in rural Ohio, 1873. Preventing her from achieving that, however, is the painful legacy of her former life, and the desperate measures to which she is driven to keep herself and her family from returning to it.
Danny Glover stars as Paul D, an old friend who comes to visit Sethe and whose understanding is tested by her household's shattering secrets. Kimberly Elise portrays Sethe's daughter, Denver, an embattled young woman who must free herself from the crippling grasp that her mother's choices have on her. And Thandie Newton is Beloved. As Beloved grows to become part of Sethe's family, her devastating presence threatens to destroy the delicate balance of Sethe and Denver's existence.
Starring: Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Kimberly Elise
Starring: Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Kimberly Elise, Beah Richards, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Albert Hall, Irma P. Hall
Director: Jonathan Demme
Director: Jonathan Demme
Screenwriter: Akosua Busia, Richard LaGravenese, Adam Brooks
Producer: Jonathan Demme, Oprah Winfrey, Gary Goetzman, Edward Saxon, Kate Forte
Composer: Rachel Portman
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Release:
May 18, 1999
Reviews for Beloved
The film's success lies mainly in its fidelity to its source: It never tries to avoid or sidestep the madness Morrison so bravely embraced.
The performances of all the central and secondary characters match the passionate intensity of the film's behind-the-scenes collaborators.
Okay, great performances, nice to look at -- but what this movie is missing is something to hold it together in the middle.
Its spiritual messages, which are deep and true, redeem any structural flaws of this ambitious film.
A movie of moments--moments of raw, lyrical emotional power scattered over a nearly three-hour time expanse.
A vivid, bewildering folk art quilt of shadows, memories, silhouettes, reflections and hallucinations.
I was sometimes confused about events as they happened, but all the pieces are there, and the film creates an emotional whole.
Like a great book, Beloved builds up, through accretion of detail, so much information and revelation that we begin to live the lives with these people.
Has tough truths to tell about the differences between affection and possession, memory and nightmare, freedom and revenge -- truths that none of the performers involved shy away from.
The core of Beloved is Winfrey's brave, utterly convincing portrayal of the rough-hewn Sethe.
Something rare: a brave film about the emotional toll of slavery, the anguish of memory and the cruel divisions that still sear African American lives.
It's heartfelt, praiseworthy and amazingly faithful to Toni Morrison's complex Pulitzer Prize-winning novel!
Moves in leisurely fits and -- unencumbered by style or narrative complexity -- never loses its forward momentum.
Within Beloved lies a great movie with a powerful message, but its impact is muffled due to the filmmakers' indulgence and lack of restraint.
Filled with some of the most extraordinary images of recent years, Beloved was apparently too powerful for audiences to handle back in 1998.
Demme's potent adaptation of Morrison's novel may be substantial, but it is also engrossing.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 77% 77% | The Hangover |
| 88% 88% | Inglourious Basterds |
| 66% 66% | Public Enemies |
| 24% 24% | G-Force |
| 44% 44% | Night at the Museum: B… |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 90% 90% | District 9 |
| 86% 86% | 500 Days of Summer |
| 63% 63% | Extract |
| 06% 06% | All About Steve |
| 78% 78% | It Might Get Loud |
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